The manufacture of slops, or cheap ready-made clothing.
At Barney’s on Madison Avenue I saw a thin slip of a t-shirt on sale for $499. The shirt looked like nothing extraordinary, and it was on a rack of what looked like 100 or so identical t-shirts. Similar shirts at Barney’s sold for $699, other nondescript things sold for $799. I felt unworthy of even touching these garments. They looked fragile. I thought the shirts might disintegrate, or go poof into a cloud of glitter, making me responsible for the cost of the item while having deprived someone of the opportunity to shield themselves from the wind and rain with these apparently superb articles of clothing.
Based on today’s definition these shirts would appear to be the opposite of slops, produced by the type of vendors who (in modern times, at least) might invoke words like "slops" to enhance their own stature. "Slops" today bears the weight of the more commonly used word "sloppy" or "slop" itself, meaning garbage or junk.
I have at times imagined that the wealthy, in their casual moments, dress in shirts sprinkled with gold while sipping waters that their Life Coach says will let them live for an eternity.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they just wear slops.
